I was certainly surprised by the MSP of the new upcoming Rapido Osgood coaches. There was grumbling with the new Walthers coach prices which are basically priced at $65.00 US. The new Rapido coaches are indicated to have a $75.00 US price tag.
The BLI CZ cars being re-released are priced at $65.00 and MTH is advertising their upcoming Daylight passenger cars at $70.00. I would have expected the MTH cars to be the most expensive of the bunch.
"Tis Market Psych 102, me boy. Set 'em up to think the worst, then go nice 'n easy and they’ll think they’re in heaven.
Those prices are MSRP. Virtually all retailers will be authorized/encouraged/induced to sell them at a discount, and some may pad the discount to ensure success if they have agreed to order a bunch of them, or if they wish to encourage pre-orders.
I agree that no matter what the prices are pretty severe in view of what similar products have gone for in the past six years, but the times they are a changin’.
-Crandell
It’s not out of line historically as the $75 equates to just about $11 in 1964.
By the time you got a Walthers kit, the underbody superdetail kit, interior kit, trucks, couplers, paint and decals, you’d find you’d pretty much paid $11-12 if not more. You’d still have to put the thing together yourself, naturally. Here you get the whole shebang in a single package and the detail is a whole lot better.
Andre
Part of the problem with new models these days is the price of commodities when they were being produced. Petroleum (used to make plastic), steel, nickel, aluminum, and copper were all at sky-high prices last summer.
Not that I think anyone is going to actually REDUCE their MSRP now that the bottom has fallen out of the commodities market, but it may be a while before we see another price increase.
Don’t forget the effect of the foreign currency exchange rates given the fact that these things are made over seas and the dollar isn’t that strong relative to most foreign currencies.
Irv
Actually, the dollar’s gained ground in recent months. Just last summer, the Canadian dollar and US dollar were at parity. Now it takes $1.23 CAD to equal $1 USD.
Andre
What are we comparing them to? I have not, obviously, seen these new Rapido coaches. But the Rapido passenger cars I have seen are beautiful replicas, loaded with detail, nicely painted and lettered.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane here. Starting with the 1976 Walthers HO Catalog…A Walthers kit, which was no snap to build by the way, was usually between $8.50 and $9.75. The interior kit was around $4.50. Oh and you needed to buy trucks. Those were $3.25. And the couplers were dummy so you needed to buy those. And paint. And decals. So you were around $20 per car and that was before you tried to build, paint or letter the thing. The car was unchanged from 1950s technology, basically.
OK bad comparison since the Rapido cars are assembled. Soho brass cars, which needed paint and decals and were minimally detailed on the underbody and had no interior details, were in the $45 to $60 range. And no couplers.
Let’s move up to the 1982 catalog. Far fewer Walthers kits but they were in the $15 range, unassembled and unpainted or lettered, no trucks, and interior was a separate charge.
Ade offered a variety of European passenger cars as plastic kits or RTR. Kits were $70 to $90, RTR $11o or more. They looked beautiful. Complete interiors, nice trucks, lighting. Very comparable to Rapido, and priced higher as kits, and very much higher as RTR.
The Keil Line, formerly Holgate & Reynolds and later Three Brothers, double deck commuter car kits are priced around $25. I mention that only because anyone who ever built one knows they were tricky to build and frankly did not look all that great, with crude castings.
Limited Editions had a large variety of passenger cars, kits, less
Let’s take a walk down memory lane here. Starting with the 1976 Walthers HO Catalog…A Walthers kit, which was no snap to build by the way, was usually between $8.50 and $9.75. The interior kit was around $4.50. Oh and you needed to buy trucks. Those were $3.25. And the couplers were dummy so you needed to buy those. And paint. And decals. So you were around $20 per car and that was before you tried to build, paint or letter the thing. The car was unchanged from 1950s technology, basically.
Interestingly enough, that $20 in 1976 equates to $74.58 today. Roughly the same as the Rapido car. And as Dave said, the technology was 1950’s and you had to build the car yourself. $75 is not out of line especially when it will be discounted. My favorite train pusher will probably sell 'em for around $60.
Andre
They’d look GREAT on a $2.7 million layout!
Geez–Wasn’t there a thread on this topic only a short while ago? Now there looks to be about three threads going on about the same thing—Prices are going up–which translates into either fewer people into the hobby or we start doing woodshedding and we’ll see a lot more scratch/bashing and who knows what—those of us who ‘stockpiled’, and were seen as being, or rather having, ‘OCD’ issues will be doing stuff with their layouts while ev’body else be sittin’ ‘roun’ bellyachin’.[|(][:-^]
I gotta go to the trainroom–look at the stockpile----heeheehee[:-,][swg]
You’re having way too much fun.
The hobby’s dying because it’s being replaced by bellyaching. Bellyaching is a cheap hobby and you can set up anywhere.
Andre
Start modeling abandoned railroads. We will not have all the complaining about loco and rolling stock prices.
Rich
How true-----[swg] -----but at the same time kinda[sigh]
The only reason prices are going up is so that some guy sitting at a desk can get his new jet or buy a new $100000 car.
but you think pricing on these are bad look at news papers-- the carrier pays .10 each and sell for .75
You’ve never delivered newspapers, have you?
Andre
I had two newspaper routes when I was a kid–I got paid to bring the newspapers to the subscribers home. Before throwing lines like this out check the facts out please.BTW–the only way I can see your point work is by suggesting that you might be referring to the newsboys who hawked their papers from the street corners–“Extree, Extree–read all about it!–” that type. But if you are referring to the guys–no kids are doing this any more–then you’re barking up the wrong tree----
Then you’ll remember that not only did you have to fold, band,and deliver the papers (at 4:30-5am 7 days a week regardless of weather), you also were the collection agent for the newspaper company. You weren’t an employee, either, but an “independent businessman” who had to pay for the papers and once you paid for the number of papers you delivered, you got to keep the excess.
As I recall. I had about 120 customers and a monthly subscription was something like $1.75 for a full 7 day subscription. I collected $210. The newspaper company charged me about $175 for the papers, so I got to keep around $35. Collecting subscription money took at least 20 hours. I would guess I worked about 2 hours a day on the route delivering. Lessee. I got $35 for roughly 80 hours work. That amounts to about 44 cents/hour.
Naturally, I bought my corporate jet after my first month in business.
Andre
Just throwing a steamer out there to generate some argument, or do you really believe that?
If the latter, I suggest you gain understanding about how businesses work. Savvy businessmen realize that there is more value in a repeat customer (one who doesn’t feel ripped off) than there is in gouging one-time buyers. Even car dealers – many of whom have a shady reputation getting as much profit as they can – would rather sell you a car at a loss and keep you coming back to their service department and to buy your next vehicle than get a hefty profit off of one sale.
And the upper executives of small manufacturing companies — Bachmann, Walthers, Rapido, Atlas, etc. – do not make individual pricing decisions on products, but monitor performance on product lines. The mid-level guys who make the decisions that affect the performance of a product line don’t have private jets and $100K autos (my boss has 2 kids in college, one starting next year, has a big mortgage on a 2400 square foot house, and has two family cars – a 4 year old minivan and an 8 year old Toyota Corolla). He flys economy class when he travels.
And yes, bellyaching is the new National Passtime – why else do you think Internet Forums were invented?
I rarely if ever get into the Forum, but I got a call last night that there was a thread on the Rapido Osgood Bradley Car, I have read through the thread, and all that I see is Price, Price, Price - nothing about product.
I have been modeling the New Haven since 1958, a time when you either scratchbuilt, heavily kitbashed or manufactured things yourself. I manufactured the first full length Osgood Bradley (OB) car - etched brass, castings and commercial wood roof - in 1962 and sold the line for about 5 years. Largely because of that experienced; about a year ago I was put in contact with Rapido who were working on the same OB cars in plastic. This January, I received a “test shot” of two of these cars, so I have seen the product, albeit not in its “final” form. To be blunt, the detail on the car is fantastic - possibly the finest that I have seen in one of today’s super-detailed plastic passenger cars. Some facts:
The body dimensions and tubular cross section are exact, and the car comes either with full skirts (1937), skirts removed over trucks (1948 - 1955) or no skirts at all (1955 on). There is a separate roof with a vent box for the smoker version of the car, Working diaphragms four paint jobs and choice of six numbers will complete the decoration (which was not on the test shot that I inspected).
The underframe detail is amazing; virtually all pipes and AC components, air tanks, etc. are seperately applied; and highly visible on the cars without skirts. There are two styles of trucks (friction and roller bearing) to match the time period of the car,
There is a complete interior with correct, one arm, rollover seats, There is a watch-battery powered lighting system in the roof that is activated by passing a magnet over one end of the roof,
Your participation is most welcome, and very positive, John. It is like anything else offered for sale…how does the prospective buyer value it? People looking/hoping for some special details in a special item will, as you suggest, be very grateful for this product.
Thanks for chiming in.
-Crandell